Zombie Cliche Lookout: An Imbalance
When you’re trying to work with someone, there’s an expectation of give and take. Quid pro quo and all that. Expecting one party to give it all while the other does nothing but takes is not just unreasonable, but insulting. So if you’re looking to broker a deal with someone, you’d better have something to bring to the table. In the middle of the zombie apocalypse, this is even more true.
Resources will be at a premium, so any potential trade partner will likely be extremely skeptical about what you’re offering. And if their deal seems to good to be true? Watch out, because it almost certainly is.
About this Episode:
As fun as it’s been getting the darkened interior to look right in these scenes, I’m getting tired of this interior and trying to shade all the ambient light from my camera (and mostly failing).
Other News:
As you may have noticed, I’ve been gone the last few days. I talked about it last week, but I think I should have added a reminder. At any rate, I was off cheering for my wife (and sisters, sister-in-law, mom, and a friend) at the Pittsburgh Tough Mudder. It was pretty awesome. As a spectator, I had loads of fun, and walked a good five or six miles around Powerline Park. Everyone on the team finished, and had a great time. The only injuries were minor cuts and bruises.
And now I want to do it next year. Time to start training.
Discussion Question: Zombie Survival Recreation
And once again I’m picking from the comments and forum. This time the question is: how are you going to keep the boredom at bay when surviving the zombie apocalypse? After all, while there will certainly be moments of incredible excitement and terror, you’ll likely also be faced with a pretty good deal of down-time to fill. So how do you do it without power, being too loud, or opening yourself up to zombie attack? How many hours of solitaire (with an actual deck of cards, of course) can you really stand?
I’m not sure how feasible it would actually be, but if I could get a decent computer, a power source to turn into electricity for it, and a decent hideaway that zombies can’t get to, I could play games on it for hours on end! 😀
I have a discussion question for Dave, of sorts:
If your zombies encountered a geothermally heated hot springs, would they be able to survive the heat from the water somehow or would their bodies cease to be able to support their head and cause them to die when the head boils? 😀
I like this question; I’m going to expand on it and use it in the next episode.
As for the episode itself, he doesn’t actually have to get in on their group, he could very likely ask them for what information they have, and dole out as little or as much as he felt like parting with.
It’s kind of a balancing scale, if you give lots of useful information you could get lots of reasonable supplies, and it would very likely benefit him to balance out what he’s willing to part with accordingly.
Of course, if he’s going to become a zombie because he got scratched or bitten, they’re highly likely to leg it with whatever they can carry away, and write the whole encounter off as bad luck! 😀
Excellent point. We’re pretty spoiled with the amount of news we have access to. When that disappears, information will become extremely valuable.
D&D, Magic the Gathering, Normal Cards/Gambling, Reading, Playing games such as hide & seek/tag/redrover, Singing together, have wrestling matches, the list is endless what you can do with out power as long as you have willing people.
Indeed it is. When it comes to D&D and the like, don’t those all require books and other materials?
Pathfinder requires 1 book, and maybe a monster manual if you’re not creative. Which Pathfinder is recently popular so the book is in many households.
Hmmm, I guess it would be working out and reading (novels and text-books)… train the mind and body. All though I don’t know if I’d like to carry all these books around…
Maybe some kind of sport, like in the movie “the battery” Just playing catch; could be useful too
If I were you, I’d look to store knowledge in safe places where zombies would be relatively unlikely to be able to get at it (or you) easily. If the knowledge is safe, then you are too.
I thought about that, but I think I’d be on the move (at least in the beginning), so that could prove to be difficult. But If it where possible to settle down, that certainly would be at a safe location (I hope)
Haha, I’d be going for: If I’m safe then my knowledge is too 😛 🙂
Good point here, BrickVoid. I’d also add that redundancy is key here. Keep your information in multiple places, including in your head.
I just looked up The Battery. Sounds very interesting indeed.
It’s a nice, quiet, low-budget little movie. No action; more about interpersonal relationships with zombies on the side. I liked it because it is very realistic in my opinion and deals with issues people tend to forget about (like brushing your teeth, what if you really don’t like killing zombies and sexual tension etc…) kind of depressing too btw.
My 60 year old parents did the tough mudder too. They had to drive a while because my family lives in Canada though.
That’s awesome, Superblok!
I dunno about you guys, but I’m gonna find all the LEGO I can.
Heck yes!
I am really liking this guy so far. The skeptic in me appreciates him calling out our fledgling group on the BS covering their desperation. FWIW, I relate in this situation. There was a time, when I was getting started in the lifestyle, that I used to talk about preparedness to folks that would listen, especially my in-laws, friends, folks in church, etc. I have tried to organize group buys to take advantage of bulk pricing, with varying degrees of success. It got to the point that I was hearing a fair amount of, “Well, if there is a disaster/earthquake/fire I will just come to your house.” That irks the hell out of me. What makes folks think I would be that willing to share? So I stopped talking about preparedness at all. Why should I be the mad prophet of doom? For a while it got to the point that I would say, half under my breath, that if you’re coming to my house to eat you’re gonna eat lead. Then I softened a bit, and started asking these folks to bring their work gloves and boots if they come to my house, because I will put them to work digging the garden. That turned a lot of folks off.
Now, when folks tell me they want to come to my house (inadvertently, because I still do not talk about preparedness in any specific way), I tell them that they’d better rind the bell or knock on the door with their elbows, because their hands had better be full of food/medicine/ammunition/silver/gold/etc.
As for recreation, I have a few shelves of books that I haven’t got to yet. I didn’t read anything but textbooks for about five years; and I am not caught up yet.
” I used to talk about preparedness to folks that would listen”
I do that too. When I try to convince my family to prepare, they laugh and say ”If there’s ever a nuclear war or something like that, why would you want to live in that world?” Sigh. I guess some people just aren’t built with the drive to survive. How on Earth do I say something that makes people rethink?
Anymore I call that “Singing for the deaf and dancing for the blind”; and I am done with that.
I suppose I’d be raiding the stores when allowable for sudoku puzzles. Lots of books to read.
But that’s just something to be dealt with when the time comes.
Hooray, my suggestion got picked.
Well, I would really like to take a piano and roll it down the really steep road not far from where I live. Hopefully there won’t be too many things that stop me from doing that. Perhaps in a ‘The Last of Us’ situation as there is not much else around to do. I really liked that one part of The Last of Us where they get to watch movies because Hydroelectric power.
In future I hope to buy a really good solar backpack to charge music players and things. Anyone know where I can get one that will last a very long time?
Unfortunately, PV cells just don’t last long with current technology, about 25 years is the consensus. They lose about 1% of their nominal life annually in real-world testing. Your best bet, then, is to lay some up and not use them until you really need them (for DC charging and such).
It’s probably worth noting that supply and demand will still apply in a crisis scenario. If you have tonnes of supplies, then you can afford to trade some of them away for something you want. Of course, this assumes that the other party has something you want and we are in fact negotiating a trade. If you don’t need anything they offer, even a spare pair of hands or some conversation, then they’d better hope you’re a real nice guy.
It’s interesting to consider how economics will work in the aftermath of an EOTWAWKI event. I know some people keep goods just for barter in these situations, especially ETOH and tobacco. I don’t do it because I have neither the money nor the space for such an enterprise. I prefer to store the things I will need to avoid putting myself into that situation. Will I still participate in commerce? Sure, but I hope it’s not for staples, or something I desperately need.
That, and I will never trade away guns or ammunition. Why would I give someone I don’t know the means to kill me and take my goods? If you need ammunition, keep walking.
Poor Murphy. He should have laid up a few cases of both ball and soft points for that M14S.
Depends, if I’m alone then there’s not much besides Solitaire, right? Maybe some reading will come into play, but besides that it’ll be a long day when there’s nothing to do. If I have at least one other guy I tend to carry a deck of cards in my backpack for playing, so basically any game that involves cards is good.
Yeah, once things get settled in, there will be a lot of free time.
Maybe we can take up cave paining, like our ancestors?